[MD] Emptiness & Quantum Mechancics

[John Carl]

dmb,

On Thu, Oct 7, 2010 at 1:09 PM, david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com>wrote:

>
>
> John said to dmb:
> ... since you and I agree on disparaging Relativism, I'm puzzled how you
> can disagree with me that Truth is an Absolute Ideal. Even if you make
> Experience your Absolute, it is still, an Absolute.
>
>
>
> dmb says:
>
> The pragmatic theory of truth is neither. It's a false dilemma. James and
> Pirsig agree that there is no such thing as the Truth.



Then they are wrong.  Of course there is such thing as Truth!  That'd be as
ridiculous as asserting that there is no such thing as error.  And if that's
true, then how are you going to argue that I'm in error about the existence
of error?

  Truth is the entire goal of intellectual pursuits and the 4th level of
evolutionary development completes our entire cosmic chain of being, so when
seeking Quality itself, Truth is probably about as high as we can expect to
attain, until we learn to be artful.  And yet you claim James and Pirsig
claim it's non-existent.  Ridiculous!   What next?  Beauty?  Do James and
Pirsig also argue that there is no such thing as Beauty?

snipped from another dialogue (Thanks Andre and Marsha):

   Anthony writes:

   "Intellectual values include truth, justice, freedom, democracy and,
   trial by jury. It's worth noting that the MOQ follows a pragmatic
   notion of truth so truth is seen as relative in his system while
   Quality is seen as absolute.  In consequence, the truth is defined
   as the highest quality intellectual explanation at a given time."
          (McWatt,Anthony,MOQ Textbook)


But do James and Pirsig agree that "the highest quality explanation at a
given time" does not exist?  If there is no Truth, then there is no
Quality.

I also appreciate the aknowledgement that the MoQ can rightfully be labeled
an Absolutism, since "Quality is seen as absolute".    We already know it's
an ideal.  In fact, thee Ideal really.  So Absolute Idealism sounds like the
perfect descriptor to me. But everybody has got their connotations, I guess.



> There are specific truths in the plural and they are provisional. They
> agree on the notion that "truth is a species of the good" so it is also NOT
> absolute in the sense that it is one particular kind of Quality,
> specifically intellectual static quality.


Our Absolute Ideal beyond intellectualism keeps us from getting trapped in
static formulation, and that's a good thing -that both Pirsig and James
helped us to see.  There I do agree that the pragmatic approach to Truth is
the best tool in the box, and if it was a tool AND an Absolute entity
itself, then what would we use to find it?  I mean, if we had it to use,
then we wouldn't need to go looking for it.  Truth is relative to the good -
I agree completely.



> Also, the pragmatist says that ideas are made true in experience. In a very
> real sense, this kind of truth is not ideal. It's practical and empirical.


Any truth that leans upon practicality and empirical evidence, makes
practicality and empirical evidence its ideals.  It doesn't obviate Ideals.
You have to have some sort of ideal in order for meaning to mean anything.


A true idea is one that leads you successfully in experience and false ideas
> don't. In that sense, truth is agreement with experience. But this applies
> to the realm intellectual realm as well as the workshop or science lab.
> "True ideas lead us into useful verbal and conceptual quarters as well,"
> James says, and they "lead to consistency, stability and flowing human
> intercourse. They lead away from excentricity and isolation, from foiled and
> barren thin
>  king". In other words, true ideas have quality. They work well AS ideas.
>
>
We agree.



> "To 'agree' in the widest sense with a reality, can only mean to be guided
> either straight up to it or into its surroundings, or to be put into such
> working touch with it as to handle either it or something connected with it
> better than if we disagreed.


I don't see how this stance of yours is in any fundamental way at variance
with your much disparaged "correspondence theory of truth".   The problem
with the correspondence stance, is that it assumes knowledge of objects in
themselves - a hopeless intellectual construct of infinite regress.  But
your "better than if we disagreed" is, or ha the potential to be,  just as
much a subjective construct as your perception of percieved object - so it
seems you're stuck either way with the same problem.




> Better either intellectually or practically!



I agree, but an awful lot hinges upon your understanding of betterness,
that's all.  If you make this betterness, any kind of subjective
formulation, then you're trapped in a hall of mirrors with no way out.




> And often agreement will only mean the negative fact that nothing
> contradictory from the quarter of that reality comes to interfere with the
> way in which our ideas guide us elsewhere. To copy a reality is, indeed, one
> very important way of agreeing with it, but it is far from being essential.
> The essential thing is the process of being guided. Any idea that helps us
> to deal, whether practically or intellectually, with either the reality or
> its belongings, that doesn't entangle our progress in frustrations, that
> fits, in fact, and adapts our life to the reality's whole setting, will
> agree sufficiently to meet the requirement. It will hold true of that
> reality.
>


Ok, but a long-standing issue we've had is the issue of theism.  And yet as
a doctrine or stance or whatever, it fits the description you offer, in many
obvious and some not so obvious ways.  Thus you don't seem logical to me.



> Thus, names are just as 'true' or 'false' as definite mental pictures are.
> They set up similar verification-processes, and lead to fully equivalent
> practical results.
>

This sounds again, like you're talking about Truth being an aspect of
reality. It's the correspondence issue again.  And your "set up similar
verification-processes, and lead to fully equivalent practical results."
sounds reductionistic and facile to me.  As well as an ugly kludge for
describing what actually happens when communication is achieved.  Perhaps
you lack the experience! Admittedly, true communication is a rarity in this
day and age and perhaps even more so between philosophers.  According to
Kierkegaard, only old Socrates got it right, because only Socrates really
understood how to dialogue.


> All human thinking gets discursified; we exchange ideas; we lend and borrow
> verifications, get them from one another by means of social intercourse. All
> truth thus gets verbally built out, stored up, and made available for
> everyone. Hence, we must talk consistently just as we must think
> consistently: for both in talk and thought we deal with kinds. Names are
> arbitrary, but once understood they must be kept to. We mustn't now call
> Abel 'Cain' or Cain 'Abel.' If we do, we ungear ourselves from the whole
> book of Genesis, and from all its connexions with the universe of speech and
> fact down to the present time. We throw ourselves out of whatever truth that
> entire system of speech and fact may embody.
>
> ...Agreement thus turns out to be essentially an affair of leading, leading
> that is useful because it is into quarters that contain objects that are
> important.



Meaning is created out of a narrative flow, rooted in our biological being
and extending upwards.  I agree completely.  I also agree that "cursed are
those that call light, darkness and darkness, light."



> True ideas lead us into useful verbal and conceptual quarters as well as
> directly up to useful sensible termini.



You're leaving out beauty - art, the highest human approach to the good.
True ideas lead us into more than mere "useful" verbal conceptions"  True
ideas lead to beautiful and elevating discourse.  True ideas lead to artful
rhetoric, and it is thus we know truth.  The highest aspect of the intellect
is the artistic aspect.



> They lead to consistency, stability and flowing human intercourse. They
> lead away from excentricity and isolation, from foiled and barren thinking."
>
>

Now tha's what I'm talkin' about.

Write on dave,

JC